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land, and legislation. Europeans were not allowed | to settle permanently in India. Missionaries were not permitted to teach those who were willing to learn. The Company were very good friends with Juggernaut, the car and idol, crushing and killing, and all the other processes of heathenism, while they endowed mosques, and maintained intimate terms with Mohammedanism and Mohammedans. The Company regarded the Hindoo population at that time as a set of persons who required to be managed as they stood-whom it was not desirable to improve, and who were scarcely improveable.

The experience of indigo planting has shown that Europeans may conduct agricultural operations in the East, as they conduct them in the West Indies, or in the southern States of America, and the crooked, even perverse, policy of the East India Company, founded on selfishness-and very low selfishness, too-has prevented the formation of a European community in Upper India, who would have long ago rendered mutiny impossible.

The fugitives from one Indian station in June last found shelter at the house of a Zemindar, a German by birth, who had cultivated an Indian plantation for many years-some two or three score years and is a hale and hearty man of eighty years, we understand, Why are there not eight or ten thousand Zemindars, of similar birth, with their families, especially in the hill regions and on the slopes of the mountains? The East India Company could tell.

The enlistment of high caste Sepoys, the favour shown to the Mussulman population, and ill-repaid by many of them; the neglect of the low caste inhabitants of Bengal-the mixed races, and the native Christians, who might have formed a large portion of our armies; like the delay in public works, especially railways; and the reduction of the European armies serving in Bengal-are all mistakes of the past, which have brought us to the present, and must be avoided for the future-that long future, during which Bengal must be held by seventy to eighty thousand British soldiers, and an equal number of men from Bombay and Madras.

Delhi, before the insurrection, was a reproach to the Indian Government. It is a large city-the old metropolis of the Mogul empire, with the palace of the emperors; and their successor, residing there, under the nominal title of king, with a pension of some two to three thousand pounds -we believe three thousand-weekly, and surrounded by a population of over one hundred thousand persons, chiefly enthusiastic or fanatical Mussulmen. This city was an important station in the civil administration of the Anglo-Indian Government. It is the centre of a large and influential district. It possesses fortifications which have been extremely troublesome to our army. It was the storehouse of military munitions for the North-western provinces. It had its banks and local treasury, with large quantities of metallic money, a blunder in all provinces, like Upper

India, not quite settled. Its population have always been hostile to British rule, and troublesome to the Government. These facts were known to the authorities at Calcutta, and they could scarcely be unknown to their superiors in London. We do not refer to the Leadenhall-street merchants, whose influence is nominal, and whose power has fallen to a shadow, but to the Board of Control and the Ministry. They must have heard that Delhi was a city of doubtful fidelity, an immense magazine of military stores, defended by walls sufficient to resist anything less than a regular siege of assailants, superior to its defenders in artillery and in numbers; yet they left it in possession of native regiments, without a serjeant's command of British soldiers, even to guard the treasury. This intolerable negligence should not be passed over as something that cannot be undone. That remark is applicable to all crimes-once done they cannot be undone; and that fact aggravates the criminality in many instances.

The impolicy of allowing dethroned and petty princes to retain empty names and substantial pensions, and to reside in the palaces of their ancestors, might have been deemed obvious to the meanest capacities, except for the miserable truth that it was not obvious to the capacities of our Indian rulers. They, indeed, may have calculated upon the intellectual ruin of these dynastical families. They may have even reckoned upon the destructive power of dissolute lives. They would have been correct in these calculations if they had allowed for exceptions; but they have never calculated that these were possible, although they are extremely probable. A man of intellectual vigour, in the position of the King of Delhi, with the prestige of an ancient name, with the savings of years, if he chose to make them, in his treasury, with numerous retainers, wild missionaries among the teachers of his creed, the crown perhaps, the palace and the throne of his ancestry, in his possession, would eventually risk the shadow to seize the substance. The present King of Delhi may not be the man.

He may or may not have a guilty complicity in the plot to murder the European residents. It is of little consequence whether he was an abettor both after and before all these mur. ders. He is known to have been guilty of permitting many after the occurrence of others. His friends may allege that he could not have prevented them, but his friends will not be believed generally on the subject.

The retention of these nominal rulers, without real power, but with traditions to support, and wealth to uphold them, is not a doubtful policy. It is a bad policy, aggravated by the custom in Hindoo families of adopting sons. These rajahs can never die out, because they can pick up heirs anywhere, according to the ancient law and prac tice of their land. It is true that they have not obtained the recognition of this inconvenient habit from the East India Company in recent times; yet the directors know that many claims

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THE HINDOOS AND MOHAMMEDANS.

have been made upon them through the adoptive principle, and some of these claims have even been brought before Parliament.

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all social mischief. The different classes mingle never; and the progress of improvements and of science necessarily involves the Brahmins in nervous dread for the safety of their aristocratic privileges

This upper class combine ecclesiastical and secular advantages in the "accident" of birth. They have held their "place of pride" for a longer period than even tradition assigns to the elder aristocracies of Europe. They are priests or soldiers, and they perform either or both functions indiscriminately. They are supposed to have a moral and a physical superiority over races who, for an equally long period as that of their neighbours' power, have hewn wood, and drawn water, and done the menial work of the world in these parts. The corporeal and mental powers of the lower castes, or of the no-castes, are supposed to have been affected and diminished by their hereditary and superstitious degradation. The absence of all protest against the assumptions of their neighbours confirms this supposition,. Their attachment to a religion that inculcates their intellectual and social inferiority is still further proof, if that were requisite; yet it is impossible to believe that many human beings, however degraded, can have any particularly strong feeling for the instrument of their depression.

Persons who admire the profound sagacity of the Company's Government endeavour to vindi-founded, like many others, upon ignorance. cate the subtlety of the corporation at the cost of its virtue. They hesitate to affirm, yet they hesitate not to hint, that the Directors do not object to a man with a large pension becoming a rebel. They expect to save capital by that misconduct, according to these clever admirers of new schemes, although they allow that the operations of the present year have quite overdone the wickedness wanted by their friends in office. We don't be lieve a word of this story. It is better to consider these respectable city men fools than rogues. They very much resemble other people who have lived long on the sunny side of life. They digest good dinners, rather indifferently we suppose, and they drink their wine with a merry heart and a twinkling eye, in or out of the London tavern. They do not seem to be awfully vicious. The brand of Cain may lurk in the folds of some double or treble chins; but, on the whole, we would rather call them stupid than wicked men. We don't wish to describe them by either term, but of two evils people should choose the lesser, and that, in this case, is stupidity; for it would be horrible to suppose that men, even in their collective capacity, would tempt others into the commis sion of many murders to save a few hundred thousand pounds yearly.

Hereafter, when native Princes are dethroned, they should be effectually decrowned and de-kinged. If they are entitled to pensions, they could have them made payable during their residence in Britain; or if they preferred the tropics-in British Guiana or Jamaica, where, in connection with suthicient warmth, they would mix in good society.

The Anglo-Indian army of Bengal was formed chiefly from the higher castes of Hindooism, and of Mohammedans. The Hindoos of that army are unable to mix completely, with their degraded neighbours; yet they have not any corresponding aversion to the abettors of the crescent, or to the disciples of the Cross. They have been smitten by a religious panic, and they found a pretence for their purposes in the manufacture of cartridges for the Enfield rifles with grease. They are obliged, in the use of these cartridges, to bite off the end. Their lips and teeth come thus into contact with the unclean grease of the pig, or the consecrated marrow of the cow. Either alternative is dangerous to their position with their friends, neighbours, and relatives. They feared the loss of caste. They pretended to fear that the cartridges were sent by the Queen of Britain for their conversion. The astute Mohammedans spread the story. They ap

Hindostan is divided among several races and between two great forms of religion. The Mus sulmen of India have subordinate sects, but they act together well. They are only a small minority, but they possess more than the average share of influence, property, and wealth. A majority of the landowners and native Princes belong to this Mohammedan superstition, and the Queen of Britain is reputed to have a greater number of Mo-propriated the error to their own uses. They drew hammedan subjects than any other Sovereign on the Hindoos into the plot. They, like Ahitophel the earth; but at present their loyalty does not of old, contrived the murders, and worse thau comseem equivalent to their numbers. mon murders, that have rendered reconciliation be. tween the Bengal high caste Sepoys and the British in India entirely impossible.

The disciples of Hindooism form by many the majority of the population, but they are subdivided into castes, between each of which a gulf exists, wider only than that which separates all of them from the Pariahs. These out-castes are probably doomed to hopelessness here and for ever. They at least have no hope of advancement in the present world. The Brahmins love a cow much more than "a man and a brother," who is an out-caste, not because of the cow's butter and milky riches, but its moral superiority and superstitious wealth. The barrier between the castes is amply high for

The policy was cunning and deep. It broke the bridge, and separated the rulers and the ruled for ever. The excesses in Delhi have rendered mercy there impossible, and the defence desperate. The excesses elsewhere raised the gallows everywhere over North-western India, and to the Mohammedans it matters little whether the British or the Brahmins are exterminated from India, but they would be better pleased if both parties were destroyed in this struggle, which, however, now in

516

ERRORS OF THE EAST INDIA GOVERNMENT.

volves nearly all the dynastical followers of the Prophet. Defeat will fall heavily upon those of them who are connected with the rebellion; as heavily as they deserve; for we believe it impossible to devise a Government that would carry out more completely the principle of religious toleration than that of the East India Company, with all its faults.

The future Government of India cannot afford to follow the example of the Company's recruiting officers in the Bengal army, who have confined themselves to a class and a territory. The custom had gathered the strength of law, but originally it was a bad custom. The Bengalese Sepoy belonged to a race who, like the family of a Duke, celebrated by one of our novelists, had not done any work for eight hundred years. They despised the industrial classes-never mixed with them, lived in a haughty seclusion; springing at one time, perhaps, from a different race, they are poor but proud. The crime of these men will fall upon them like a hammer. It will crush their pretensions into deeper poverty. The re-construction of the Bengalese army will proceed upon a basis not so much new as old. Those old armies of Bengal who achieved great victories under Anglo-Indian guidance were not composed exclusively, or in a great proportion, of high caste men. The army of Bengal hereafter will consist chiefly of low caste men, and of Ghoorkas or Sikhs.

The Bengal Government acted with extreme impolicy in permitting their military officers to form a provincial and sectarian army, from which the great body of the people were excluded carefully. They placed arms with subjects of all others most likely to be hostile. They acted against repeated warnings, not from civilians only, or from military officers of low rank, or from anonymous persons, but from General officers, and particularly from the late Sir Charles Napier, whose administra. tive and military abilities were unquestionable. They formed an army of comparatively little use, because the men were not more averse to greased cartridges than to ocean ships. They indulged every crotchet of these men, with the view of keeping their consciences clean and clear. They petted them in a manner unknown to European soldiers, and they, by these and other means, produced the rebellion.

One of these means was their reduction of the European officers in number and in power. They permitted appeals in the arrangement of discipline that destroy the influence of the officers over their men. They reduced the complement of British officers, and then they employed part of the balance on civil matters and the collection of revenue. The officers who had formed the most intimate acquaintance with the country and its language were selected for these civil engagements. They were the men best qualified to manage the soldiers, and their places were often supplied by others who absolutely could not speak the language of the natives whom they were to command.

The East India Company have established competitive examinations for their civil service appointments, in which ancient Greek confers more marks than any of the spoken languages of Hindostan. A good Latin scholar will go higher than a young gentleman capable of talking his way from the summit of the Himalayas to the sea. It is an absurdity almost unequalled in folly by any of the other droll mistakes of our rulers. A mercantile house who wanted a person to represent them in Buenos Ayres would not care much whether the individual selected for the appointment possessed all the classical, military, monetary, and poetical qualifications of Major Macgregor, but if he were ignorant of goods, or could not speak and write the language of Buenos Ayres intelligibly, they would never send him there to study at their expense. The mercantile house in Leadenhall-street adopted a different system of examination, in which a knowledge of the Oriental customs, history, and language is barely recognised, while the metre of defunct poetry enjoys considerable and altogether gratuitous influence.

All these errors must be avoided hereafter. The Anglo-Indian army, or the portion forming the army of Bengal, must be recruited from different classes-the number of British officers must be very greatly increased-they must be employed solely on military duties; and they must not proceed to India for the purpose of learning these duties, and unacquainted with the languages of the East. The existing necessity for amending these errors indicates the incapacity of the Calcutta Government, for no body of men with average intellect would have made anarchy so easy, or contrived an equal number of encouragements to the disaffected.

The wretched respect to caste-with which we have no business and which any good government would endeavour to neutralise-continues to infect the service. Even officers who have acquired distinction cling to this vestige of dark ages with the reverence of routine. Some sentimental persons in this country have had their nerves shattered by the reports of the guns to which Sepoys of high caste have been attached and blown away. We have a notion that this mode of death is far too easy for the criminals; but it has been adopted without any consideration of that subject; and as a concession to the aristocracy of caste exactly as Peers were beheaded in this country. Brigadier Chamberlaine adduces his determination to blow the guilty Sepoys from their cannon, as evidence that the British Government will not interfere with their religion. If the gallows be more disgraceful and more fearful, it should be adopted exclusively, if only to destroy casteism; and orders have been sent out, we hear, to adopt that punishment.

The East India Company have followed a bad financial policy; which has led to the murder of many Europeaus at small stations. They have never changed the currency of the country, which

FINANCES OF INDIA.

is chiefly formed from silver; and they had stored sums of fifty to one hundred and fifty thousand pounds at different statious in the Bengal provinces. This bullion stood fast under the eyes of the Sepoys, and sharpened the temptations for revolt to which they were exposed. The argument of hostile agents gathered all the weight of the silver in the treasury. They broke from their allegiance to become rapidly rich; and as they had incurred death on discovery, they burned and murdered to make their identification difficult. The substitution of a paper currency for that of rupees would have removed this temptation, saved the Indian finances from a heavy loss, our domestic commerce from a serious drain, and secured the fidelity of all the monied classes of India-from the peasant, with his hundred rupees, to the bankers and the merchants who cannot afford to speculate in rebellion, with a currency of paper.

The most fatal error in our recent policy was the reduction of the army at the close of the Russian war, and at more recent dates, without any provision being made for the state of India, which was then known to be dangerous by the Government. The late Sir Charles Napier said that the insurrection would arrive, when it came, like a thunderbolt. Officers in India say that it came upon them like a flash of lightning. The papers already submitted to Parliament show that it could not have come upon the Government either like a flash of lightning, or a thunderbolt. Even the public knew that several native regiments were disaffected, and displayed a mutinous spirit. Mysterious movements of lotus flowers and pancakes occurred through all Upper India. The native police were employed in dispensing these signs, yet their rulers were unacquainted with the nature of the novelties. A secret entrusted to several thousand men is never kept if a Government want to know it; but the Anglo-Indian Government ruled upon home notions, which are scarcely practicable as yet. in India. They knew that a revolt was imminent, or they should have known that fact. Ignorance in the circumstances would deserve censure; but they were not ignorant, and yet they adopted no precaution. They did not even change the position. of the regiments-they did not borrow a force from Bombay or Madras; and, although the Home Government were acquainted with the apprehensions on the subject, yet they did not increase the European forces in India; but left the lives and property of the European residents under the care of armed gangs, whose mutinous spirit was known. This policy is supposed to consist with economy; but it is the most wretched waste of money imaginable; and the rulers of India in Calcutta and in London are to a great extent responsible for the sufferings which have occurred in India to Europeans, and for the vengeance which has already fallen, and must yet follow with greater force, upon the deluded men who have been guilty of horrible and indescribable excesses.

An opinion prevails in some quarters that the

517

mutiny in India will cost to our Government a large sum of money, but not in any ordinarily informed quarter; for the cost even of the regular regiments of the line is defrayed out of the Indian revenues during their service in that country. Two divisions of British soldiers are located in India; the first is a part of the regular regiments, and the second consists of Europeans in the service of the Company. The British army may be strengthened, therefore, either by increasing the number of regiments of the line located in India, or of the European soldiers enlisted for service in that land. The latter plan is not likely to be adopted permanently, because it is probable that the Company's government will be terminated, when hostilities are succeeded by inquiry.

The finances of India will not materially suffer by this change. An army of fifty thousand European soldiers would be more efficient than double the number of Sepoys, and they would not be more expensive. We must not, however, it is argued, rule India as a conquered country. That may be unnecessary in many parts of India; but the north-western provinces need to be conquered, and it is useless to make any other pretence on the subject. They are nearer the healthier stations than the peaceable districts, and that will render their occupancy by Europeans more practicable.

The finances of India are larger than many individuals at home suppose, for Indian questions have not a fair share of consideration from the people at home. A periodical, almost officially connected with the Government, gives the following figures from documents which are open to any person :

According to the accounts made up for the year 1855-56, the gross revenue collected in India, exclusive of repayments and drawbacks, amounted to £28,812,097, and was derived from the following sources:

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23,120,138 Thus, against a net income of £22,147,347, the total

charges of the year amounted to £23,120,138, showing a deficiency of £972,721 added to the debt of the Indian Government in that year.

CAPITAL DEBT.

1. The capital stock of the company £6,000,000,

redeemable by the payment of

2. The home bond debt

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3. The India debt

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Total debt
Deduct guarantee fund

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£ 12,000,000 3,894,400 50,483,369

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Upon these liabilities the annual charge is as follows, the entire amount of interest being payable on the capital stock while that upon the guarantee fund is allowed to accumulate until it reaches £12,000,000:

ANNUAL CHarge.

1. Capital stock, 10 per cent....
2. Interest of bonds, 4 per cent.
3. Indian debt

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Total annual charge

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The finances of India are capable, however, of great extension. The land is not half cultivated, and half the value of the crops in the ports of shipn ent has been paid for carriage. The Company have not acted with adequate vigour on these subjects, partly because they have never employed a sufficient number of British officials, and partly because they have even prevented the employment of British capital and skill in the country.

We cannot doubt that the natives of India have grave causes of complaint against their GovernThe writer next refers to the large proportion from perfect. The Committee on the practice of ment. Its practice and regulations have been far of revenue collected from the land, and congratulates those who receive it, that the mutineers cantorture in the Madras Presidency elicited black facts on that subject, which, however, only proved not run away with the land, and therefore that any arrears of rent or taxes will be made good; but, the necessity for employing a far larger number of the land may remain, yet its produce may be de-officials in the absence, and without the knowledge, British officials; for torture was inflicted by native stroyed or removed, while in calamities of that nature it is not customary to insist upon the payment of rent.

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The late Sir Charles Napier alleged that the cattle and the services of the ryots were taken for the conveyance of stores and other purposes on account of Government, and were often not paid for. That practice also, we presume, originated in the employment of native officials, who draw, and at the same time, who forget to pay, the money. The business of India cannot be managed without the natives; but they should be under closer surveil 57,615 lance than has been exercised over them for mang 411,678 years.

Net.

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4,074,402

39,604. 142,933 30,309

4,786,541 A comparison is next drawn of the proportion of the Indian debt to that of our own, and generally of European countries. The Indian debt is not equal to three years' revenue, and the charges thereupon are not equivalent to one-seventh part of the annual income. The debt cannot be regarded, therefore, a heavy burden upon the resources of that country; and yet Hindostan could not support that debt at its present quotations without the knowledge, general to the creditors, that it is in one sense guaranteed by tle British treasury. The particulars are:-

The justification for the use of extreme measures in the suppression of this revolt is found not only in the brutal and sanguinary conduct of the mutineers, but also in the fact that the persons who have revolted were not among the oppressed classes. All parties agree that the discipline of the Sepoys has been destroyed by kindness and petting, and the Asiatic character misapprehends indulgences which are supposedto spring from weakness, and to be the fruit of fear.

The Hindoo and Mohammedan priesthood, who have actively engaged in these revolts, had no complaint that a Government professing complete religious toleration could prevent or withdraw. They were irritated with the progress of new principles, with the adoption of morality as the basis

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